Rumsfeld writes of Iraq war origins

Nearly 10 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offers up his answer to one of the most confounding questions of the decade: When did planning for the war in Iraq begin?

It was just 15 days after the World Trade Center collapsed, he wrote in his memoir Known and Unknown, which is due out Feb. 8. The New York Times and Washington Post published excerpts of the book late Wednesday.

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“Two weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, those of us in the Department of Defense were fully occupied,” Rumsfeld wrote, according to the Times, but President George W. Bush “wanted the options to be ‘creative.’”

The stories reveal that Rumsfeld, despite his bravado during his years at the Pentagon podium, is not a man without regret.

Among them: Stating that after the first weeks of invading Iraq that he knew where suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were located.

But Rumsfeld said his biggest mistake was not forcing Bush to accept his resignation following the revelation that members of the U.S. military had abused Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

Though he still considers the documented incidents of abuse to be isolated actions of rogue soldiers, Rumsfeld did concede that the blow of the scandal could have been softened by his resignation.

“Abu Ghraib and its follow-on effects, including the continued drumbeat of ‘torture’ maintained by partisan critics of the war and the President, became a damaging distraction,” he wrote. “More than anything else I have failed to do, and even amid my pride in the many important things we did accomplish, I regret that I did not leave at that point.”

Rumsfeld also uses the memoir to deny claims that he tried to block commanders’ requests for more troops in Iraq. But, he said, in retrospect, it might have made sense to have ramped up the military presence in Baghdad to prevent the looting that followed the 2003 invasion.

Others in the administration might have something to ruminate on as well.